Black Hands
by Luan Mao
Summary: Mix a dark suspense series and a romantic comedy series? You can try, but you'll never wash the sin from your hands.
1. Meets and Greets

**Disclaimers 'n' caveats 'n' stuff**

On the Love Hina side, I'll be following manga or anime continuity as I see fit. I'll totally ignore continuity as I see fit. On the Noir side, I'll fold, spindle, and mutilate characters and continuity as I see fit. It'll certainly help the reader to have seen both anime series. Failing that, a glance at a one-paragraph summary of each should suffice, as I'm not taking either too seriously here. You'll certainly miss some of the jokes, but I don't think anyone ever died of that. Not unless a short, slim girl with short, dark hair took offense.

There. I think that about covers it. Oh, except for saying that I don't own _Noir_ or _Love Hina_. In fact, I don't own much of anything. Here's a bit of advice for anyone who wants it: If you have kids who are heading for college, disown them before they or the colleges start hitting you up for money. Disown them as emphatically as you can. Like with a catapult. Sure, a catapult in your front yard is big and ugly, but not as big and ugly as those bills from the college.

**Black Hands**

**Chapter 1: Meets and Greets**

Shinobu Maehara sat on a park bench, crying. She'd left home with nothing but a small suitcase after… after another violent argument between her parents? She couldn't quite remember what had caused her to get on the train, but when she had looked at her suitcase, she'd realized that she had moved out. Run away from home.

She'd stumbled her way to a converted inn late yesterday, a girls' boarding house which miraculously had a room open. The owner had taken pity on her and agreed to let her work for her room and board. She'd come down to town this afternoon to buy groceries, when it all caught up to her. She had just turned thirteen and she was on her own and she couldn't even remember what her parents looked like.

Shinobu sat on a park bench, crying her eyes out.

...-...

Keitaro Urashima sat on a park bench, worrying. His parents had confronted him that morning about his failure to get into college, his poor prospects of ever getting in, the uselessness of college, his inability to follow the trade that had been planned for him even before his birth, and the drain he was placing on the family finances. Right now he was procrastinating before climbing up the hill to talk to his grandmother. He'd gotten a letter yesterday, possibly something about a place to live when his parents kicked him out. It was hard to tell because Granny was completely insane. After eighteen years, after supposedly changing his diapers as a baby, she still thought he was a girl. Insane.

Keitaro sighed, then looked around for a distraction from his gloomy and self-pitying thoughts.

On the next bench over he saw a girl crying her heart out. Keitaro pulled out his pad and pencils and sketched the girl's profile. He was a good artist – despite his parents' contempt for wasting time on the arts – and quickly had a drawing which captured not only her looks but her moment of despair.

Keitaro shook his head. That wouldn't do – such a pretty young girl should be smiling and enjoying life, not weeping. He shook his head again. Such a loser as himself couldn't help her with her problems, but at least he could draw her happy.

Keitaro started another sketch, intent this time on removing the heartbreak. The pencil moved over the page while Keitaro kept his eyes on the girl. When the sketch was done, Keitaro looked at it to take in the whole of the smiling portrait.

But… it wasn't a smiling portrait. What had he done? The pretty face on the paper was that of the young girl, but it was devoid of all happiness, all grief, all emotion. All humanity.

Keitaro flinched violently, then stared at his hand. Where had that come from?

...-...

Shinobu looked up, yanked from her self-pity when something came flying toward her. Her hand flicked out quicker than most people had ever seen a human move, catching it before it could hit her.

It was a sketch pad. With drawings of – of _her_! The artist, a college man, looked upset as he made ineffectual attempts to get the pad back. Shinobu cried out, "Auu! How could you!"

The man laughed unconvincingly, then struck his own hand. "Ah, I couldn't help it. Bad hand! Bad hand!"

Shinobu looked again at the drawings. They weren't the almost-porn she'd been afraid of when she found a college man drawing a barely-teenager. The first was realistic enough, an unflattering sketch of her crying, tears and puffy eyes and all. But the second! She looked like a monster! Why would he have done such a thing? Distressed beyond measure by this added affront, Shinobu burst into renewed tears and ran off with her groceries, still clutching the sketch pad.

...ooo000ooo...

Keitaro lifted his leg up one last time and then heaved his body up to follow it. He had thought he'd been keeping himself in shape, but his legs had gone rubbery after going up only 120 steps, with 26 to go. He remembered the number of steps from years ago, thanks to having to run up and down, up and down as part of his training. _Strong legs make a strong heart._ Granny loved him… probably. It was hard to tell, with the way she drove him so hard in training him to be the strongest, toughest, best-coordinated little _girl_ in the world. When he was little, he'd thought she was just silly, teasing him like that. When he was a bit older, he'd thought it was part of the training, toughening him up emotionally as well as physically. Now? Now he figured she really thought he was a girl. Crazy old bat.

Finally reaching the wooden porch by the front door (five wooden steps after the 146 stone steps; adding insult to injury, they were) and staggering into his family's inn, Keitaro called out, "Hello? Granny? I'm here!" Silence was his only reply. The pattern of noises – just an old building creaking with the wind and sun – told him that no one else was in this wing, though the condition of the front room told him that someone lived here.

Granny's room was locked. Keitaro shrugged. She was probably running errands or visiting with Haruka down at the bottom of the hill. He'd avoided the tea shop on the way up because he wasn't in the mood for one of his aunt's (but don't call her Auntie!) lectures.

Honestly, he wasn't in the mood for his grandmother, either, but he was out of options at the moment.

There was one good thing: no Granny plus no guests equals Keitaro having the hot spring to himself. Leaving his suitcase by the door, he wasted no time getting himself to the changing room and then into the water.

_Bliss!_

...ooo000ooo...

Keitaro ran for his life. An already-bad day had turned into the worst he'd ever had. It wasn't bad enough that he'd been kicked out of home and had to come stay with his crazy grandmother. No, now he had to be attacked by a pair of violent girls when he was half-asleep in the hot spring. What was his grandmother thinking, calling him here with these psychos? And not even a word of warning!

Tearing out of the washroom with nothing but a towel clutched precariously around his waist, Keitaro headed for the front door and his suitcase. If he was very fast and very lucky – _Very_ lucky! Where did that rocket come from? – he would be able to get decent and get out of the inn before those murderous chicks caught him again.

So intent was he on watching behind him as his feet traveled the well-known path that the young man didn't notice the young woman who'd just stepped into the hallway, heading for the washroom and the hot spring.

"Aaauuu!" "Oof!"

Keitaro found himself upside down and then on his head and then on his back before he finished his Oof. Looking up, more than slightly dazed, he thought he saw the crying young girl he'd drawn before. His eyes slid from her face, then down along the bare, slim leg standing on his throat, and then back up. She was wearing a towel. She was wearing only a towel. She was wearing _only_ a towel!

Keitaro's nose erupted with a fountain of blood.

...-...

Shinobu jumped back to keep the spray of blood off her leg. This allowed her to see more of the young man. She saw _much_ more of the young man, as well as his towel, lying some distance from his body. The urge to kill, the urge to pass out with her own nose spray, and the urge to run away warred within her head.

"Aaauuu!" Running away won.

...-...

Keitaro recovered from his bedazzlement just in time to scoot up six inches and let the sword chop the floor between his legs. No fool he, he leaped up and hightailed it, dodging another missile, to the front door, his suitcase, and escape.

… And his aunt, as it happened.

"What's going on in here?" Haruka demanded. "Oh, Keitaro. Mother said you would be coming soon. I expected you to be wearing more than a pair of trousers and one shoe, though."

Keitaro moved to hide behind his aunt as the girls burst from stairway. "Save me! They're trying to kill me!" If he hadn't started out naked, he could have handled them easily, even the sword girl, but he probably wasn't good enough to take them all on bare-handed. Let alone bare everything else.

It took a while, but Haruka kept everyone's violence under control long enough for Granny Hina's unsent letter to Keitaro to come out and make it clear that he was the inn's new manager. No one was happy about it, least of all Keitaro, but he had no other options, nowhere else to turn, nowhere else to live. Thus, he was less accommodating than he might have been in a different universe.

"I will not tolerate a man as manager!" the oldest girl, Narusegawa, protested. "This is a _girls'_ rooming house! There is no place for a _man_. Especially not a groper!"

"Groper? It's not groping when you grabbed my hand and placed it on your own, ah, chest." Children present, though Narusegawa was acting more childish than the youngest one here.

"Varlet! You not only blame an innocent schoolgirl for your misdeeds, you exposed yourself to an even more innocent schoolgirl. That is dishonorable! You are living proof that no man can be trusted."

"You're the dishonorable one. Attacking a stunned man with a sword? You should be ashamed of yourself. That's the act of a coward."

...-...

Shinobu partially agreed with the new manager. It _was_ cowardly to attack an unconscious man. On the other hand, if you were going to kill someone, it was easiest to do it when he was unconscious, or at least not paying attention. On the other hand, even after living here for less than a full day Shinobu had noticed that Aoyama spoke constantly of justice and honor but didn't behave honorably. Just like a self-proclaimed samurai, using _honor_ as an excuse to bully others and do whatever she wanted.

No, wait… Where had that thought come from? She'd never thought much about samurai, other than history lessons and movies.

Still, Shinobu's earliest training had been honest to the point of brutality: her soul, her hands would be blackened, but she would hold them over the innocent, to protect the children and to make the world a better place. Not like the samurai, thinking themselves better because they could slaughter unarmed peasants and then lying to themselves about what they were doing.

No, wait… Training? Shinobu hadn't had any training, other than school. And… running? And… punishment for failing to hit a moving target?

Shinobu shook off the confusing thoughts and brought her attention back to the argument.

"Why would I agree to a duel on your terms, Aoyama?" the manager was saying, deliberately rude. "You're demanding that I give up something belonging to my family and fight you with a weapon of your choosing. You're risking nothing and tilting the odds in your favor. Are you afraid you can't win a fair fight?"

"Keitaro," Haruka-san warned. "And you, Motoko-san. Keep that sword in its sheath or I'll take it away from you again."

The manager frowned but nodded. "I'll make you a counter-bet, Aoyama: We duel, each with our choice of weapon. If you win, I will not manage the girls' boarding house. It'll probably have to close because there's no one to manage it, but you'll have gotten what you wanted."

"Agreed!"

"And if I win, you give me your sword."

"That is an outrage! ShiSui has been in my family for generations!"

"And this inn has been in my family for generations. Bring your sword. I'll meet you outside."

Motoko stomped out, followed by a huffy Narusegawa and a curious Su. Shinobu stood quietly against the wall, watching as the new manager pulled something blocky and metallic out of his bag and tucked it under his shirt.

Urashima-san met Shinobu's eyes for a moment after he stood up and turned around. She knew that look, the look of a predator, before his aunt distracted them.

...-...

"Leg wound, right Kei-kun? Try not to cripple her. Mom is trying to work with her clan."

"I shouldn't have to shoot her at all. I'll offer to cancel the duel with neither of us losing. I'm hoping she'll be smart and accept. If she doesn't, I'll try not to hurt her too much."

"Do what you have to do, Keitaro, but please protect the peace."

"That pretend samurai is no newborn, Auntie. _Ow!_ And I'm trying to protect the peace."

...-...

_Please protect the peace_? Shinobu's heart skipped a beat. Where did she know that from? It meant danger and pain and … and fulfillment.

...-...

Even though Keitaro did not intend to follow the family trade, he'd been trained in marksmanship as part of his childhood training. It was hardly a common skill in Japan, practiced only by bodyguards and assassins. Unarmed combat was much more common, although most students learned gentler arts like Aikido, not the lethal techniques he'd practiced. That was why he'd set the duel up this way, with a surprise reveal of his weapon. He had no desire to kill this foolishly overconfident teenaged girl.

As for the younger girl, Maehara-san, he wasn't sure what to make of her. Most of the time she seemed like nothing more than a cute, young schoolgirl. Just for a moment, though, he'd seen a predator lurking behind the schoolgirl eyes. It was a look he was very familiar with from his family.

...ooo000ooo...

The next morning, Shinobu set out breakfast for her fellow tenants and for their manager. Keitaro noticed that the best dishes were set closest to him. Coincidence? Brown-nosing?

Aoyama had agreed to cancelling the duel and withdrawing her objection to Keitaro managing the inn. She would watch him carefully for any sign of perversion or dishonor, but her adamant refusal to allow him in the inn had been withdrawn.

To her credit, the samurai girl had refused to "duel" him when she saw him come out without a sword or even a bokken. He hadn't needed to scare her off with his pistol.

But of course that was not the end of the challenges.

"This place is a mess! How do you expect us to live in a battered wreck of an inn?" Narusegawa had launched her attack over breakfast. Rather uncultured, but what could he expect of someone with such an obviously unbalanced temper?

After the meal, she led Keitaro around the inn, pointing out the moss in the spring area, the cluttered common room, and the unpainted outer walls.

"What are you going to do about this? If you're going to pretend to be the manager, it's your responsibility to make this place spotless."

"Yes, Narusegawa, I agree that the whole inn is filthy and needs a good cleaning from top to bottom. It's not entirely my job to to clean it. Look here at your rental contract. You took the student-rate option, right?"

"Of course. I am a student, unlike you."

"Aoyama and Konno, too, though I'm not sure how Konno qualifies as a student. It doesn't matter. In order to get the student rate, each of you agreed that you'll do chores. Read this: 'Tenant is responsible for three hours each week in helping to clean the common areas. Cleaning tasks are to be assigned by and logged by the manager. The tenant may pay ¥5,000 per hour in lieu of cleaning.' Now look at the logbook. You, Aoyama, and Konno haven't done any cleaning in at least the last three months. That's, ah, about ¥200,000 each. Maybe more, once I find the earlier logbook. If all three of you pay what you owe I'm sure I can hire a cleaning service to make this place spotless, and buy material for some repairs, too. Try to pay in full before this weekend, all right?"

Narusegawa tried to splutter out something about "not fair" and "Granny never said anything", but Keitaro didn't budge. What mattered was the rental contract her parents had signed, and if this female dog in human form didn't want to pay, she could move out. He won either way.

...ooo000ooo...

Keitaro spent much of the next several days inspecting the inn, making an inventory of repairs it needed while Aoyama and Narusegawa spent every spare moment frantically cleaning. It wasn't a reassuring list. There were no _major_ problems, or none that he'd found yet, but there were about a million things needing paint or a few nails or about a hundred shingles. Granny hadn't been doing her job as manager. Did she have something else keeping her busy, or was she just old and slowing down?

Keitaro had just pulled his head out of an under-stair closet when a rustle of fabric caught his attention. He got an arm up barely in time to deflect a head kick from a girl who'd flipped over the banister.

An agile little monkey girl! She latched onto his arm and swung around and managed to nail him a good one before wrapping around his head like a psychotic headband.

But Keitaro was good, too, and bigger and stronger than his attacker. He got her legs unwrapped from around his head, jabbing nerve clusters as he did so, then throw her on the ground. She stayed down as her legs turned to jelly.

And now Keitaro recognized her. Something Su, the foreign girl, the one who'd eaten an entire bunch of bananas on top of a normal breakfast.

"Oh, you're good!" she enthused before he finished remembering her name. "We'll have to play every day."

Coming down from the adrenalin high, it took Keitaro a moment to get his reactions under control and not pull the pistol from the concealed holster. _Don't shoot her, don't shoot her._ Except he wasn't carrying a pistol inside the inn. _Careless, careless…_

"Su-san, why did you attack me? That's a good way for someone to get hurt."

"Aw, I was just playin'. Sometimes Motoko plays with me, but she's been grumpy the past few days. And she never wants to play when I want to play with my mechas."

"Mechas? Fighting robots? So you're the one who's been shooting missiles? You've wrecked a lot of the inn and grounds."

"Oh, that's no problem. Just give me a bill and I'll pay it. My brother gives me a destruction allowance. He's the best big brother in the world!"

Keitaro blinked as little bundle of energy jumped up and ran off. Was it that easy? He wondered, would it be unethical to encourage her to blow up parts of the inn that already needed to be fixed, then get her to pay for the repairs?

...ooo000ooo...

Keitaro finally met the last tenant after he'd been at the inn for almost a week. She allegedly had some job where she was out most nights, spent a lot of time in bars, and was often gone for days at a time. It was news to him that "professional drunk" was a paying job, but it wasn't any of his business, so long as she paid her rent and didn't get sick where he or Maehara-san had to clean it up. In any event, he had to collect rent and arrange for her to do her chores and just meet her.

"Keep it down, I'm coming, I'm coming. It's not even eleven yet. Don't you remember I said not to knock before noon? _Eep!_"

The door slammed in Keitaro's face, cutting off his view of rounded flesh. She evidently slept unencumbered by clothing. He briefly thought about passing out in a spray of nose blood – he'd of course seen plenty of female flesh when he was younger and Granny brought him into women's changing rooms and hot tubs, but that had ended years ago, when he got old enough for other women to object – but frankly he was just too busy and didn't want to have to clean up the mess.

The door opened again, showing a fully-dressed woman about Keitaro's age. "Well, hello, Sugah. It's a bit early for strange men to be knockin' at my door, but you must be some hot stuff if Motoko hasn't chased you away yet."

"Good morning, Konno-san. I'm Keitaro Urashima, the new manager of the inn."

"Granny told me she'd be getting her granddaughter to fill in while she was away on business. Did something happen to her?"

Keitaro closed his eyes and sighed. The old bat was going to be the death of him.

After explaining, yet again, Granny's perennial confusion, Keitaro followed up with a request for the rent. And last month's rent while she was at it. And he made an attempt at arranging for either chores or money in lieu of chores.

"Oh, well, I'm a little short at the moment, but I should get paid soon. I can give you maybe half a month's rent in a week. That's OK with you, isn't it, Cutie?"

Keitaro stepped back as she reached to run her hand down his neck and chest. "No, it's really not OK. I need your rent money so I can pay the bills. If you want to keep having electricity and hot food, you need to come up with your rent. Let me put that another way: I want to keep having electricity and hot food, so you need to come up with your rent."

Over the next few days, Konno tried several more times to flirt her way out of having to pay her rent and do her chores. When that didn't work, she turned to other scams.

One time she asked him to come to her room after he finished his afternoon work, answered the door in a torn top, and then jumped back, yelling, "Urashima-san! What do you think you're doing?"

Her plan to have Narusegawa punch Keitaro into the next county failed because Shinobu was coincidentally nearby, taking care of one of the endless chores she did to pay her rent. Shinobu glanced at Keitaro just as Naru and Motoko burst out, then asked, "What are you talking about, Konno-san? Mr Manager is just standing there. And don't you think you should wear a bra? You're only twenty and you're already starting to sag."

Keitaro snickered inside and thought about asking Shinobu to accompany him anytime he needed to talk to Konno. He also thought about evicting Konno, but it was a good question whether he, a man, would be able to find another tenant for a women's dorm to replace her. For now, it was probably better to keep her.

After another backfiring bit of attempted blackmail, Konno gave up the attempts and went back to attempting to flirt her way out of her responsibilities.

"Why don't you take a break, Sugah? Sit down and watch this movie with me. To make up for trying to trick you before, I'll even share some of my sake. C'mon, have a seat and we can get friendly."

It didn't work. Keitaro wasn't budging. He wasn't exaggerating when he told her they needed all the money he could raise in order to buy paint and keep the utilities on and food on the table.

Besides that, Granny had trained him since childhood in how to use his feminine wiles to make a man relax his guard. Once he got to around twelve years old he rebelled against the lessons, but he still remembered them. Compared to him, Konno was an amateur at flirting with a man.

Consequently, Keitaro found himself supervising a hung-over Konno using a scrub brush one Sunday morning, having given her a choice of working all day or being tossed out that afternoon. The in-lieu-of-chores money would have been more helpful, to buy materials, but he could make do. Kaolla Su had been as good as her word, sending her mechas after Keitaro as he ran through the most run-down parts of the inn and then cheerfully handing over large wads of cash.

...ooo000ooo...

Shinobu saw it all. Perhaps because she was small and quiet and maintained a carefully-cultivated shyness, she had been able to get around anywhere unnoticed for as long as she could remember … She thought she'd been able to. Sometimes she could remember childhood games of sneaking around and ambushing others, marking their hearts or necks or kidneys with chalk, but sometimes she couldn't remember two days ago. It was driving her crazy.

Shinobu saw the attempted bullying and approved of Keitaro's firm response. You had to slap them down hard. For a first lesson. If the bullying continued past that, then it was time to kill them.

What!? Kill them? Where had that thought come from? She was a good girl! She had never killed anyone, never been taught to kill anyone. Her parents had been bakers. Or… they owned a restaurant? A catering service? It was hard to remember. Why couldn't she remember?

Confused, the girl wandered off, working her way through her memories.

She wasn't too confused to bring a feather duster to the new manager's room and pretend to clean while checking what weapons he had. She'd been trained to evaluate all potential threats, and eliminate them if necessary.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note<strong>: Why am I writing this? Because anything worth doing is hard, which means that anything hard is worth doing. It was hard to cross a slapstick romantic comedy with a gritty, dark, action mystery, from which you must conclude that it was worth doing. QED. If that logic is difficult for you to follow, don't worry. Go to college, taking out large loans even if you don't need them, and enter a philosophy program. Stay up late every night, talking with other philosophy majors. Make sure to take your daily recommended dosage of drugs and alcohol, or even a bit more than the daily recommended dosage, and before you know it, that logic will be clear as day.


	2. Dangerous Girls

**Black Hands**

**Chapter 2: Dangerous Girls**

Keitaro quickly settled into the routine of managing the inn and riding herd on the tenants. With Konno's rent almost caught up, he had a little money for repairs, which he stretched by doing the work himself. He killed two birds with one stone by carrying all the boards and slate shingles and buckets of paint up those blasted steps. In just a few weeks his legs were as tough as telephone poles.

His leg-strengthening routine had one unwanted side effect: drunken staggering for a minute once he got up to the inn.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing, you pervert!?"

"Sorry, sorry! I tripped and fell into you. I'm sorry!"

Apologies did nothing to calm Narusegawa's wrath, or her ferocious punches. Nor Aoyama's wrath or the swats with her sword.

In theory Keitaro should be able to stop the girls' attacks, or at least avoid them. He didn't even try, as he felt guilty about shoving his face in their … chests. Or knocking them down and ending up in a pile with his hands up their skirts.

Despite the endless accidents, the house's self-appointed watchdogs of morality eventually accepted that Keitaro probably wasn't a rapist or peeper, and even his gropes had at least the appearance of being an accident. Keitaro appreciated this; he didn't care for being hit even if it did help keep him tough.

There was some backsliding, some jumping to conclusions. One afternoon, a noisy procession passed from the woods to the inn.

"Eeeeeee! Noooooo! Keep away from meeeeee!" Shinobu was making very good time across the grounds, wailing the entire way.

Keitaro was running after her at top speed, almost within arms' reach but always a few steps behind.

The first that he knew that Aoyama had come out to investigate the ruckus was when a wave of some kind of energy tore up the lawn, heading right for him. What the hell was that?!

Luckily he'd caught sight of the wave just in time to jump, so the churning earth didn't do much more than knock him off his feet.

The bridge crossing the small stream wasn't so lucky. It exploded in a shower of boards and splinters, catching Kaolla Su's mecha right in the face.

"That was great! It's been months since you did that! Do it again, Mo-chan!" Su-san was literally bouncing around, even more wound up than usual.

"You did that? What was it?" Keitaro was stumped. He'd never heard of being able to cause an earthquake, even a small one. This must be why Granny wanted to work with the Aoyamas. But he had more immediate concerns: "And who's going to fix the bridge?"

"I used a secret family technique to protect a young girl from an attacking male. That is all that one such as you needs to know."

Keitaro probably would have let Aoyama off easy because of the misunderstanding, but the pretend samurai's arrogance and prejudice, right after her trying to kill him, got on his nerves.

"Fine, keep your secrets. And you can use some more of your family secrets to rebuild the bridge, fix the lawn, and repair Su-san's mecha. If you do all that, plus whatever Shinobu-chan, er, Maehara-san needs as compensation, then I won't evict you and won't talk to the police."

After a few rounds of resistance and arguing followed by defeat and negotiating, Aoyama agreed to go home the next weekend to ask if she could teach Haruka the Rock Splitting Spirit Sword. There was no way she could pay for the repairs, and training Keitaro's aunt would at least keep the technique away from a perverted male.

And as for Su-san...

"Oh, don't worry about it, Motoko. I have to redesign my mecha anyway. I wanted to catch Shinobu but not hurt her, I just wanted us both to have a good time, so I couldn't shoot a missile. Maybe Turtlehead Mecha Mark II can shoot some goo at her to slow her down, or jump on her and hold her down so I can get my playtime in."

Keitaro was right the first time. Su was crazy!

Su-san wasn't the only crazy one. Narusegawa went into periods of irrational, aggressive anger, leaping to the most ridiculous conclusions and then punching people – Keitaro – because of the "truth" of what she'd seen.

Like seeing Keitaro reaching toward Shinobu's chest. It wasn't conceivable that he was handing her some vacuum cleaner bags he'd just bought. No, the only possible explanation was that Keitaro was about to grope the younger girl, who was paralyzed with fear.

After he'd been punched out the front door and had rolled down the entire stone stairway, Keitaro limped into Haruka's tea house right at the bottom of the hill.

"Uh-oh, what happened, Keitaro?" True to form, Haruka barely expressed any sympathy, continuing to wipe down tables as she talked.

"Narusegawa. Again. Hey, Auntie – _ouch!_ – you told me that we need to work with the Aoyama clan, and she's supposed to be back in a couple days to let us know if she can teach you. But what about Narusegawa? She's not good for anything, is she? So I can just evict her for being a bad-tempered nutcase?"

"Sorry, Keitaro. Mom wants Naru here, too. Says she might be one of the trees."

"'One of the trees?' What does that mean?"

"She never said. All I know is that Kanako is definitely a tree."

That didn't explain anything. He and his sort-of-sister had climbed plenty of trees when they were children, but even the crazy old bat shouldn't be crazy enough to think Kanako _was_ a tree.

Bottom line, though, he couldn't boot the cow from the boarding house no matter how violent she got. He'd have to take care of her violence himself.

Keitaro cracked his knuckles as he stomped up the stairs. _No problem._

Up at the inn, Keitaro found Narusegawa kneeling submissively just inside the front door. With eyes cast down, she whispered in a tremulous voice, "I'm very sorry, Urashima-sama. I jumped to a conclusion and let my temper get the better of me. Please forgive me. It won't happen again." Narusegawa glanced at Shinobu, whom Keitaro hadn't noticed until now. "Was that polite enough, Maehara-sama?"

"That's up to Urashima-san," the younger girl said harshly.

A few minutes later, Narusegawa had been given permission to hit him when he accidentally groped her and had promised not to hit him otherwise. She edged out of the room, keeping Keitaro between her and Shinobu.

Alone in the front room, the manager and the youngest tenant worked together as smoothly as they always did, he lifting and she vacuuming. Unlike the other girls, Shinobu was a delight to work with. She was an excellent cook and never needed to be prompted to do her share of the chores, and she never hit him except when they were working out. If he were allowed to evict Aoyama and Narusegawa and if he didn't need the rent money from the other two, it would be so tempting to live here alone with Shinobu-chan. Su wasn't so bad, aside from being so loud and energetic, but Konno…

When Keitaro found that Shinobu had been doing some chores for the others, especially the oh-so-busy Konno, he tried to force them to pay the girl. He knew the thirteen-year-old was supporting herself, though he didn't know why, and he knew she'd need money for… whatever it was that teenage girls spent money on. Clothes, or whatever. Though Keitaro had a vision of Shinobu slinking into a pawn shop to buy bullets on the black market…

In any event, it didn't work. Narusegawa and Aoyama said they weren't taking advantage of the girl and promised not to do it again. Konno didn't deny slacking, but offered to pay Shinobu back by giving her tips on attracting an older man.

Keitaro scoffed. As if that would work. Konno had too much fat and too little muscle to be attractive, or at least not to him. Not like Shinobu, who was slim and lithe and surprisingly strong and unbelievably fast and could keep up with him when he was working out. And Konno's idea of attracting men was to expose flesh and make empty promises. Not like Shinobu, who never made a promise she didn't carry out.

From his own upbringing as a little girl, Keitaro recognized that Shinobu acted like the perfect traditional Japanese housewife: quiet and polite and competent in the kitchen. And dangerous. Very, very dangerous, like a beautiful flower with deadly pollen.

Keitaro smacked himself. She was thirteen. Hands off, no matter how attractive her flower.

...ooo000ooo...

"Could you please bring down the orange jar of miso paste, Urashima-san?"

"Here you go."

"I appreciate the help, Sempai, but there's a stool in the closet. I can get things from the high shelves myself."

"No, I like helping. After a long day of working and studying and dealing with the others, it's relaxing to be with you. Helping you cook, I mean!"

Keitaro's correction didn't do anything to cool Shinobu's blush.

Shinobu's blush and downcast eyes obviously didn't do anything to her alertness. While Keitaro washed dishes, a knife flashed past his ear, pinning a very large spider to a cupboard.

On another evening, Shinobu was carrying laundry up the stairs, following Keitaro after he finished another day of prep class and chores around the inn. Keitaro suddenly dodged one of Su's surprise mecha attacks, which left Shinobu in the line of fire. The blue-haired girl back-flipped down the stairs, snatched a framed picture from the wall, and flung it like a discus at the mecha. Su was heard muttering about improvements for the next generation as Keitaro helped Shinobu pick up the laundry… until she realized that he was folding her underwear. "Aaauuu!" She grabbed all of the clothes and disappeared up the stairs in a flash.

Incidents like these weren't the only reason she was the most interesting tenant. She couldn't remember her father's name or what he did for a living or why she was here by herself.

It didn't make any sense. Keitaro had glanced at the information Granny had on all of the tenants when he became the manager. He'd looked at Aoyama's and Narusegawa's in more depth when he was looking for an excuse to evict them. Now he looked at Shinobu's records, trying to figure out this mystery.

Father: unknown. Mother: unknown. He hadn't noticed that before. Shinobu had casually mentioned her parents' names a few times over the past six weeks. She gave different names each time. Either she was a liar or there was something wrong with her memory. Shinobu didn't seem to be a liar, and he couldn't see how giving the wrong names would get her anything.

If she had something wrong with her memory…

Keitaro had memories he didn't want. Much of his childhood had been bad, being forced by his family to reach his body's limits, to spend entire days practicing his skills.

Shinobu was a predator. He could see it in her eyes sometimes and in the way she moved. And she'd been pushed harder than he ever had been. There was no way a small girl could regularly beat a larger, older, highly skilled man unless she'd been trained even harder than he had.

Had the poor girl repressed all of her childhood memories? Could her life have been that bad?

Keitaro didn't know what he could do to help with that, but he could help to make her life here better.

...ooo000ooo...

Once he had the inn well in hand, Keitaro had returned to his studying with a vengeance. He didn't care about his parents' foiled plans for him. He didn't care about his insane grandmother's schemes. He didn't even know what the old woman had in mind, but she _always_ had a scheme working, and he didn't want anything to do with it.

Getting into Tokyo U was _his_ goal, _his_ plan. He didn't even remember why he'd first set his sights on that school, or even how he'd heard of it. All he had was a fragment of a childhood memory of promising to get in. It could be that, even as a small child, he had rejected his parents' disappointment in him not being able to follow the path Granny had planned for him – _her_ – before his birth.

Regardless, he had signed up for an afternoon study class to help him pass the admissions test. Most days he'd study and do chores for about eight hours, go to class, then come home in time for a soak before dinner.

"Hello, Shinobu-chan." Keitaro had jogged to catch up to his youngest tenant, whom he'd spotted a block ahead. He was just being sociable, that's all. "Do you mind if I walk with you? I won't be scaring away a boyfriend, will I?" He mentally slapped himself upside the head. That was none of his business and he didn't want to give her any idea that he was overly interested in a barely-teen's love life.

...-...

"G-Good afternoon, Manager. N-no, I would like it if you walked with me." Shinobu cursed her stammering. She didn't want to give away any hint of her crush on the young man. "A-and I don't have a b-boyfriend yet." Oh no! Why had she admitted that? Now he'd think there was something wrong with her and she was an old maid!

...-...

"Here, let me help you carry those." Keitaro shifted his backpack so he could take most of the hundred bags of groceries the small girl was carrying. This was a little way he could make her life easier. He definitely liked her despite her bashfulness and he respected the way she supported herself at such a young age. Unlike the other girls, all of whom slacked off as much as they could on their three hours a week of cleaning chores, Shinobu threw herself wholeheartedly into her 20 hours of chores every week. "Is everything OK? You're late today." He shouldn't have said that. Keitaro didn't want to sound like a creepy stalker who knew exactly when she should be coming home each day of the week.

...-...

"I- I had to stay after school. My math teacher is not satisfied with my work." Oh, no! She shouldn't have said that. If Kei-kun – she could call him that in her own mind, even if she'd bite her tongue off before saying the words to his face – if he thought she wasn't able to keep up with her schoolwork as well as her housework, he wouldn't let her stay with him and she'd have to go back to … back to wherever she was before this.

...-...

"I can help you if you want. You can come up to my room any time. N-no, that's not what I meant to say! We can, we can work at the kitchen table. No one could object to that."

Keitaro shut up. It was safer. The two walked in self-conscious silence as night fell, sneaking glances at each other, and quickly looking away if the other noticed them looking at each other. The adorably awkward moment ended when Keitaro stifled a curse as one of his bags ripped. Shinobu politely stopped, in front of a narrow alley, to wait for him to redistribute the fallen goods.

"Heh, heh, heh. Look what we have here, a careless little girl who doesn't know she shouldn't walk by herself at night. Fun times, boys!" A hulking figure had half-emerged from the alley.

Keitaro dropped his freshly-gathered groceries and sprinted to rescue the girl.

… who didn't need to be rescued. Three cans of coconut milk flashed so fast that if Keitaro had blinked he would have missed them. In the next eyeblink Shinobu had ran away wailing. "Aaauuu! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

All three thugs were dead, their faces caved in. Keitaro quickly grabbed Shinobu's spilled groceries, all except for the exploded milk cans. There would be nothing to eat tonight without these bags, and nothing tomorrow, either. His and the inn's finances couldn't bear to lose two days' food.

Keitaro didn't even consider calling the police or doing anything about the bodies. Lessons from before he could remember told him to get away quickly. Kill all witnesses. Luckily, there were no witnesses in sight, so he could just get the food and go.

After he had lugged about ninety-nine bags of groceries to the top of the inn's stairs and set them down so he could open the door, Keitaro smacked himself in the head and then ran back down the stairs. _Sloppy_. Those cans of coconut milk had Shinobu's fingerprints all over them.

But when he got to the alley, and it took time because he had to keep out of sight, he found that not only were the cans gone, the bodies were gone. Only a smell remained, cleaning product of some sort, an "outdoors" smell totally out of place in the middle of a city.

There was no sign of police anywhere. A bureaucratic organization like a police force could not have come, cleaned up, and left in this amount of time. It was a mystery. Keitaro filed it and headed back to the steps up to the inn.

...ooo000ooo...

One evening as Keitaro helped Shinobu with the supper cleanup, she turned to him with a pleading expression. "Mr Manager, my class in school is scheduled to take a trip to Kyoto to see the bamboo forest. We don't have enough chaperones signed up, so we won't be able to go. Would you pleeeease come with us? I'll make a special lunch that we can sha– I mean, I'll make you a special lunch."

Keitaro didn't stand a chance. Even if he didn't feel more of a connection to the barely-teen girl than he should have, he'd have agreed to eat his own liver five second after she used those puppy-dog eyes against him.

Thus, a few days later, Keitaro found himself on a bus, one of the few adults among dozens of noisy, excited, chattering, giggling middle-schoolers who'd gotten up well before dawn. He'd hoped to get some studying done during the several-hour trip, but those hopes were dashed just minutes after the doors closed.

"First time as a chaperone, right?" one of the teachers asked sympathetically as Keitaro slumped after stopping some older students from making some younger students polish their shoes for them. "It must be. You look like you just graduated last year. Don't worry, you get used to it."

That wasn't as reassuring as it was probably meant to be. Did the teacher think he was insane? What Earthly reason would Keitaro have for subjecting himself to this enough times to get used to it?

("Puppy-dog eyes," a tiny voice whispered. He told it to shut up.)

After the morning's guided tour – restful for Keitaro because the students mostly shut up for an hour – and lunch shared with Shinobu – just as delicious as promised – the class was allowed to wander around the forest before the return trip.

Shinobu, ever the economical cook, took the opportunity to gather some kind of edible fungus, an expensive delicacy which she could gather for free here. Keitaro was a decent cook himself, but not in her league and he always bought his ingredients from the market. He wouldn't dare gather wild mushrooms because he would never want to unintentionally poison anyone.

Nevertheless, he had a valuable role to play in this expedition: pack mule. The fungus wasn't especially heavy but it was bulky, and tiny little waifish Shinobu could not have managed the pack.

In addition to the fungus she expected, Shinobu also found several other species as well as a few roots that were likewise expensive and useful. Their gathering expedition took them farther and farther from the school group's tour area. As the evening came on, the wind picked up and clouds gathered. It would be a dark and stormy night.

Suddenly a shot rang out. Quicker than an eyeblink, Shinobu disappeared into the forest. Keitaro, hampered by the pack, could only throw himself face-down. He hadn't even crawled behind the bamboo stand before she was out of sight. Discarding the pack and drawing the pistol which he hadn't consciously realized he had brought with him, Keitaro pursued his friend, moving faster when a flurry of new shots rang out.

By the time he found her, it was all over. Shinobu was standing, face blank but eyes very alert, surrounded by the bodies of three men in green and yellow coveralls. Camouflage for hunting Shinobu and him in the bamboo forest, no doubt. There was a handgun near every dead body.

"Come on! We have to get out of here before anyone sees us." The same instinct-level training was telling Keitaro that they had to be long gone by the time anyone else – witnesses, police, more killers – saw the scene.

Shinobu snapped out of her daze. "Aaauuu!" came the familiar wail as she ran away. Keitaro noticed how she tucked her pistol into the small of her back without breaking stride. He collected weapons, bullets, and wallets, and then used a stick to tear up their footprints as he followed.

As soon as he got back to the starting point, well behind Shinobu, Keitaro was grabbed to help the teachers herd the students into a group to wait for the buses. Shinobu was standing alone so he drifted toward her, but a pair of slightly older girls came up to talk to her before he got there.

"So, Shinobu-chan…" one of her classmates said slyly as they waited for the bus which would bring the class back home. "Did you have a good nap?"

"Ah, what?"

"Well, you were out of sight for a while. Everyone else stayed together, but you disappeared right after the tour. What could you have been doing that we weren't?"

"I was looking for—." In the presence of older girls, Shinobu was back to her normal self: young and small, shy and uncertain.

"Did you notice that you have leaves in your hair, Shinobu-chan?" the second girl asked, elbowing the first with a wink.

"You have leaves on the back of your sweater, too," confirmed the first.

"You must have been lying down."

"Lying on your back."

"So you must have been sleeping in the forest, right? Why else would you have been on your back, in the forest, where none of us could see you?"

"Or hear you."

"Though I thought I heard you scream once a few minutes before you came back to the rest of us."

"It wasn't a scream. It was more of an _ohhhhhh_!

"We didn't go to check on you because it didn't sound like you were dying…"

"Maybe just a little…"

"Yes, a little death."

"And it looks like your boyfriend—"

"Her 'landlord', you mean."

"Oh, that's right. He can't be her _boyfriend_ because he's too old. It looks like your _landlord_ was lying down for a nap, too. He disappeared at the same time."

"And he has dirt rubbed into his elbows and knees."

"But we didn't hear him yelling like he was dying."

"Not even a little death."

Keitaro couldn't think of how he could rescue Shinobu from the gossips' smirking insinuations. ("Does your landlord have a bed or a futon?" "How soft is it? Softer than a pile of leaves?" "How _do_ you pay your rent with no parents to take care of you?") Rescue himself, too. His reputation was being dragged through the mud just like hers was. But anything he said to defend Shinobu would make it worse. Anything she said would make it worse.

Shinobu didn't say anything. The cute little girl disappeared in an eyeblink. Her face went flat. Monstrous. It was the face from his drawing the day they met!

The problem went away, at least for the moment, as the two girls went away, leaving behind a faint smell of ammonia.

...ooo000ooo...

Putting the confrontations on the bamboo forest trip behind her, Shinobu sold most of their bounty of mushrooms and used the rest to make a fancy meal. For the first time since Granny's abrupt departure, the inn's grocery budget had enough extra to buy live fish and other ingredients above just the basics.

The industrious young chef could have used some holiday or birthday as the excuse, but she didn't bother. The real reason was that the manager had insisted that she take three quarters of the mushroom money and she wanted to show her gratitude. And she wanted to show what she could do. Kei-kun was always so impressed with what she accomplished with only limited material to work with. She'd show him that if she had the proper ingredients, she could make a meal any husband would be proud of! If Kei-kun were her husband, she would offer him something mouth-watering every night.

Shinobu looked down as the other meaning of her thought occurred to her. Luckily, her blush was hidden because Kei-kun was walking behind her … behind and below her, with her bottom right in front of his face. Shinobu blushed deeper, but couldn't stop her hips from swaying a bit. Why oh why couldn't she have a figure like Mitsune-san? … But Kei-kun wasn't interested in the rather over-stuffed woman and he did like Shinobu, so she held her head high and waggled her hips even more as she went up the stairs a few steps above him.

...-...

Keitaro dealt with the weight of the twelve fish he was carrying for Shinobu. The fish were good-sized, but not _that_ heavy. What was heavy was the water to keep the fish alive until just before cooking. He dealt with it. It was good strength training.

The stairs, though… As he struggled up the (146 damned) stairs, Keitaro needed something to take his mind off the burning in his legs. He found himself focusing on the skirt-covered behind right in front of his face. No! If he'd had a hand free he would have slapped himself. She was thirteen! True, she was more mature and more capable than any of the other tenants, but she was still a little girl.

… A little girl who could kick his ass. Shinobu had talked him into bare-handed sparring a few times, when Motoko wasn't available for working out. Despite her size, despite his strength, despite his family techniques, she beat him three falls out of four. Sure, he was holding back, but so was she. Her school clothes didn't show it, but she was solidly muscled.

Which brought him back to the solidly-muscled behind swaying right in front of his face. Keitaro groaned and shut his eyes.

Finally overcoming the stairs, he brought the fish to the inn's kitchen. The girl prepared the meal with an efficiency that was always a pleasure to watch.

As Keitaro grabbed the fish one at a time from their bucket and placed them on the cutting board for the chef, he thought he saw a wave of despair pass over her. "What's the matter, Shinobu? You didn't spend all your money at the market, did you?"

She paused before bringing her cleaver down on the last fish. "I can kill so easily but I feel nothing. Why don't I feel anything?"

Keitaro saw a tear glistening in her eye, but then she beheaded and gutted the fish and the moment was over.

...ooo000ooo...

Life at the inn went on. The girls went to school or to their jobs, paid their rent, and did the chores Keitaro assigned them (with varying amounts of coercion and supervision required). Keitaro managed the inn and kept it up, and studied when he could.

And Keitaro continued to stagger after climbing the stairs, or trip going down the stairs, or start cleaning the changing room just as a naked teenage girl came in from the hot spring. And then be sent flying for his perversion.

Shinobu saw it all. She saw the trips and the collisions and the accidental gropes.

She saw that Keitaro managed, with no intent at all, to come into intimate contact with all of the tenants.

All of the tenants except _her_. When was it going to be her turn? Why wasn't Kei-kun ever clumsy around her? When was she going to just happen to be there when he came around a corner and ended up with his hands in her shirt? Or his face against…

Shinobu looked down and concentrated on carrying dishes to the table, not wanting Kei-kun to see her blush.


End file.
